The facts that animals and humans share an evolutionary heritage, and that we can gain medical insights through a comparison between species, are not new. And Zoobiquity contains some misconceptions about how evolution works and how to analyze it. Nevertheless, I think the book well-worth reading. I learned a lot from it about things ranging from cancerous rhino horns to anorexic pigs.

Check out my review here. (You can also read a fairly long excerpt from the book in the New York Timeshere.)

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Interesting point about large animals and long-lived animals being more vulnerable to cancer in theory. Whales are an extreme, but there are lots of other species we could examine. Giant tortoises and elephants, for example.

Just googled around. Apparently the issue is called Peto’s paradox, and somebody has their own explanation, that some cancer cells evolve to attack the original tumor, if the organism is big enough to survive the initial tumor growth: